It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.

US Threatens North Korea With Nukes To Warn Against Threatening With Nukes

The government of the United States of America announced today that it has flown B-2 bomber aircraft, capable of attacking with some of America’s many thousands of nuclear weapons, close to the borders of North Korea. The purpose, says the U.S. military, is to warn North Koreans that the USA is capable of launching a nuclear attack against North Korea “quickly and at will”.

The Obama Administration explains that it has been forced to threaten North Korea with nuclear weapons because North Korea has engaged in the unacceptable behavior of threatening other nations with nuclear weapons.

I would like to think that it isn’t necessary for me to point out the moral hypocrisy and strategic weakness of this plan. However, in none of the corporate media coverage of this story that I’ve seen has there been any hint of the America’s nuclear threat.

I have no argument with the criticism of North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and use of those weapons to threaten nuclear war. However, to cast North Korea as the only belligerent party in the current nuclear crisis, when the United States invented nuclear weapons in the first place, has engaged in the only nuclear attacks in history, and has large numbers of soldiers stationed along the borders of North Korea, is absurd.

Never a huge fan of nuclear weapons (I still have occasional nightmares about hiding under my school desk as blinding light flashes through the windows), I must nonetheless respectfully disagree with your argument, J. First (and somewhat beside the point, I know) it is technically incorrect to say America “invented” nuclear weapons. Actually, European physicists fleeing Nazi terror did, and Hungarian Leo Szilard actually patented (in England) the invention we have come to know as the atom bomb.

Second, I think it is the height of Monday morning quarterbacking to blame America for building the first bomb. The world was in imminent danger of being overrun by true monsters in the 1940s (monsters who, by the way, were believed to be attempting to build their own atom bomb). No less a supreme humanist than Albert Einstein himself felt it was critical for America to develop the bomb first (in fact, he was instrumental in persuading Roosevelt to do so). I don’t think it is realistic to suggest today that America should have taken the moral high road in the 1940s by refusing to develop the bomb.

On the subject of the bomb’s first (and second) use, I realize I’m on much shakier ground defending the U.S. Every book I read on this subject leaves me drifting first pro, then con Truman’s decision to actually use the bomb. By that point in the war it was inevitable and obvious that the Allies would win against Japan, but the best available estimates suggested we would incur hundreds of thousands of casualties doing so, while the Japanese populace would incur millions. Given that, plus Joe Stalin breathing down his neck, I can at least understand why Truman made the call he did, even if I wish (as I do) that he hadn’t.

And after that the genie was, of course, well and truly out of the bottle for all time. Nuclear weapons became the only realistic defense against nuclear weapons, then as now. That sucks, and it’s deeply evil, but it is not America’s evil, it is humanity’s. I don’t hear people blaming the Chinese for inventing gunpowder every time there’s a school shooting.

I don’t believe there is any rational perspective from which The Dear Munchkin’s current sabre rattling can be blamed on the U.S. The kid is nucking futs, just like everyone in power in North Korea past and present. The question I would put to you, J, is this: what would you have done differently if you were in the Oval Office in 1938, 1945, or 2013? It seems to me you can blame people for their actions only if you can point to better options that were realistically available to them, and that were equally or more likely to yield the required results (and in the case of N Korea “the required result” is, mostly, keeping our Asian allies calm by keeping them confident that we’re there for them). Personally, I think Obama’s response thus far has been measured, responsible, and realistic.

In passing, I must also question your assertion that we have “large numbers of soldiers” stationed on N Korea’s border. We have a total of 28,000 troops stationed throughout South Korea…about enough to stage a nice parade.

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